Name: Steak Roll
Ingredients: 2 pounds sirloin steak; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; dressing (as for Turkey)

Why it works: Butter and turkey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Steak Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the sirloin steak well.
Season the steak with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Prepare a dressing as you would for turkey and spread it over the meat.
Roll the steak tightly and tie it with string.
Season the outside of the roll.
Baste the roll occasionally while roasting.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Butter + turkeytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + turkeytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).